Category: Politics

Contrary to the information that was available at the time of my posting earlier this week about the VT shooter, it turns out that the guy did, in fact, have a history that should have barred him from being able to purchase guns. In 2005, a judge ruled him mentally ill and a danger to himself. In spite of this, he was able to walk into a gun shop and purchase a 9mm pistol, and order another online.

So it seems that in this particular case, a simple background check should have raised red flags. A few moderate, sane gun laws – or perhaps merely the enforcement of existing statutes – could very likely have saved over thirty lives.

Yet still the NRA would have us believe that .50 caliber sniper rifles are perfectly valid purchases for hunting or home defense.

My favorite post and follow-up discussion (with good points made by both sides, highlighting what a difficult topic this is to deal with) on the subject so far is from Elayne Boosler over at HuffPo – “We are getting tired of prying your guns out of your cold, dead hands”.

Oh, and in my list of People Who Need to Shut Up about VA Tech in the last post, I missed the obvious: The Jack “Virginia Tech is Bill Gates’ Fault” Thompsons and the Dr. “How The Hell Did I Get a Doctorate” Phil who lay the blame squarely on video games (despite the fact that apparently Cho had no violent games on his PC and apparently hadn’t played them in years). I also missed the news of the Scientologists who are swooping in to prey on the grieving students, and the debate on good ‘ol FUlly Unbalanced Fox News (beacon of reason that it is) over whether Cho was possessed by Satan.

Incidentally, while at a wake yesterday I met a guy who’s got a daughter attending V-Tech who knew at least one of the victims and coached the child of one of the teachers who was killed. He seemed a little shaken just from talking about it, even though he knew his own daughter was unhurt. To have any sort of personal stake in an event like this must be stressful and nerve-wracking in the extreme.

(Of course, shortly after this conversation I got to experience some minor stress and wracking of nerves myself when my youngest daughter fell face-first on the glass ice cream bowl she was carrying and we had to take her in to get a bone-deep gash over her eye sewn up. Yeah, eight stitches on an eyebrow is a far cry from wondering if your child is alive, but I’ve been fortunate in that for the most part my life has been boring enough that a nasty cut is what passes for a crisis.)

Traditionally, in my infrequent posts here, I try to come up with a title for each post that is, depending on one’s taste in humor, either clever and witty or pathetic and obvious. The goal is to elicit either a chuckle or a groan… I consider either to be a victory.

But as I sit here contemplating what to say about Monday’s bloodbath at Virginia Tech, I just can’t seem to force the Pun Machine (an apparatus to which, I’m convinced, at least a full 2/3 of my mental capacity is dedicated) to crank up and churn out anything suitable. There’s just nothing pun-worthy about the situation.

The gun advocates and the gun control folks were out in droves before the bodies were even counted, pointing blaming fingers at one another while ignoring the fact that the real culprit here was a sick, sick person who decided that his own lack of personal fulfillment was justification for the taking of innocent lives, and decided to handle the work himself rather than the more acceptable method (i.e. achieving high office and then sending other people off to fight an unnecessary war – yes, it’s harsh, but it’s true, and as one blogger pointed out, Iraq suffers two Virginia Techs a day on average.)

The gun control crowd (which I suppose I fall into, in that I favor sane and reasonable controls on who can stop at Wal-mart to pick out a shiny new fully-automatic killing machine loaded with armor-piercing rounds) was quick to assert that America’s gun culture is at fault for this shooting, but I’m not convinced that’s the case in this particular instance. What’s been revealed about the shooter doesn’t, as yet, indicate that he had any history of being a gun nut. In fact, at least one of the firearms he carried was purchased just a few weeks ago. The guy apparently had no criminal history or any other red flags on his record that would have kept him from legally purchasing a weapon even in a state with much stronger gun control laws than Virginia’s.

On the other side, the NRA fans are chiming in with claims that more guns are the solution. Had other students or faculty been armed, they say – and correctly, in my opinion – someone likely would have fired back and stopped the shooting spree earlier on, and even the almost inevitable crossfire and ricochet casualties from the ensuing shoot-out would probably have left fewer dead in its wake than the slaughter on Monday did. The fundamental problem with the philosophy of fighting crime by making firearms ubiquitous is that while it may be possible to nip the occasional mass murder in the bud, the overall body count, I’m convinced, wouldn’t decrease. Instead, the killing would be broken off into more manageable, less news-worthy, bite-sized chunks of powder-burned single- or double-murder goodness. Heat-of-the-moment, crime-of-passion shootings just don’t happen if you need to run home to fetch the pistol in your nightstand, but I wouldn’t want to be the guy assigned to give a Glock-toting co-worker his annual review while he’s fondling his holstered faux penis.

So, having heard from the left and the right (and finding myself in less than total agreement with both sides), I turn now to the fringe elements: the folks who assumed without any factual basis that the attack was carried out by muslim extremists, or that the teaching of evolution is to blame. Those two should be given about as much credence as conspiracy theories that the Busheviks planned this massacre to draw attention away from their current problems, or the idea that dry cleaning chemicals are the real culprit.

(Side note: Yes, I know I said I’d write something for the Blog Against Theocracy weekend, and yes, I know it didn’t happen. So let me use this space to concisely summarize what I would have written: Theocracy = Bad. Separation of Church and State = Good. Overzealous Fanatics = Danger, Will Robinson!)

A number of successful (read: people have heard of them, unlike this blog!) bloggers are teaming up on Easter weekend for an effort they call the Blog Against Theocracy in support of the constitutional principal of separation of church and state. If I’m not distracted by shiny objects all weekend, I’ll try to cobble together a few thoughts on the subject and post them.

PM Carpenter’s blog today deals with John McCain’s continued progress in transitioning himself from our reality into a world where the streets of Baghdad are filled with faeries and unicorns dancing around maypoles. If I were the sort who regularly chose some sort of “quote of the week”, this week’s award would almost certainly go to the title of his latest entry: “But Jesus Loves the Boneheads, Too”!

Cancer has been big political news over the last week or so. First came the Edwards’ campaign’s announcement that Mrs. Edwards’ cancer has returned; that news was followed by the revelation that White House spokesman Tony Snow has undergone surgery for a recurrence of colon cancer.

The right-wing punditry, of course, was quick to jump all over Edwards to accuse him of using his wife’s ailment to bolster his campaign, with Rush Limpjaw of course leading the way. Now this is, of course, little better than a hunch, but I’m just guessing that ol’ Rush won’t accuse the White House of trying to use Mr. Snow-job’s medical issue as a means of distraction from current political problems.

No, I’m thinking that the right wingers will be up in arms because “the left is accusing the administration of using Tony Snow’s cancer for political gain!” – regardless of whether or not this actually happens. “Those America-hating liberals are happy to hear that Mr. Snow is sick – they want him to die, that would make them happy!”, we’ll likely be told, though no specific examples of such speech will be provided.

Yes, when liberals like the despicable folks over at Crooks and Liars proclaim,

“And as we sent thoughts and prayers to Elizabeth Edwards, so too, should we send them to Tony Snow and his family, for what they are about to face.”

, Rush will assert, “They’ve added Tony to their prayer list right under Saddam and Osama!”, Sean Hannity will proclaim that they’re feigning sympathy, and Ann Coulter will screech, completely out of context, “Yeeee, hee hee hee hee…. I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!”

Earlier this month, the zipper of secrecy slid open and The Dick sprang forth from his undisclosed location. Not content with his continued molestation of our democracy, The Dick launched a world tour to remind his previous conquests in government and media that they were still required to bend over at the time and place of his choosing.

It was during this latest junket that Generalissimo Cheney made a statement that Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats, and, by extension, sane people the world over, were “validating Al-Qaeda” through opposition to the Iraq war.

Yes, we had to overthrow that evil (formerly US supported, WMD-less, Al-Qaeda-opposing) dictator Saddam, who tortured and killed his own people (and not in the civilized American way we’re torturing and killing them now). We had to do this because on 9/11, zero Iraqis hijacked no planes and flew them into no buildings, and if we lacked the courage to invade them and dole out big oil contracts to US companies, they might not do it again… or worse.

Yes, Dick Cheney and his fellow Neandro-cons’ plans to invalidate Al-Qaeda have successfully increased anti-American sentiment the world over, provided a terrorist training ground (conveniently located!), drawn our attention away from the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, left our military overtaxed and under-equipped, and further de-stabilized an already dangerous region. Take that, Osama! Of course, our efforts have cost us thousands of troop casualties, killed tens of thousands of civilians, and put us billions of dollars further into debt. The latter isn’t so bad, though – it further invalidates Al Qaeda because a good chunk of that money is owed to interests in Saudi Arabia (birthplace of such historic figures as Osama bin Laden and most of the guys who actually did cause a little mischief on 9/11).

Now Iran’s (Sunni Al-Qaeda-hating, shiite-dominated) government is threatening to validate the terrorists by potentially someday theoretically maybe building nuclear weapons. So, if a new report by Seymour Hersh is accurate, the Bush administration has adopted the “an enemy of my enemy is my friend” policy which has served America so well in the past (see: Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden).

That’s right: To stir up trouble in Iran and thus protect America from Al-Qaeda-connected terrorist groups, they’re funneling money to Al-Qaeda-connected terrorist groups! Brilliant!

Sarcasm aside, Mr. Cheney, I prefer to assume that your recent appearances are just part of an ongoing effort to cover the utter failure of your ideology and of policies which always had nothing to do with fighting terrorism and everything to do with enriching and empowering yourself and your closest business and political allies. I hope this is just another symptom of your willingness to say and do anything necessary in support of your own flawed agenda.

I hope these things because the alternative is that you went on national television to accuse Nancy Pelosi of validating Al Qaeda while your hands still bore ink-stains from stamping Osama bin Laden’s paycheck and that you truly, deeply believed this accusation to be true and yourself and your followers to be the good guys. If this is the case, Dick, then you have left selfish, twisted ideologue behind and moved into the realm of – to borrow a technical term from clinical psychology – the batshit insane.

Does it seems to anyone else that Bush’s “New Way Forward” is basically the same as the “Old Way Backward”? What we’re doing isn’t working, so let’s do more of it!

Meanwhile soldiers and civilians keep on dying in a war that never should have happened.

So Saddam was hanged last night. Good riddance. I’m sure the right-wingers are trumpeting that the left is saddened by the loss, despite their inability to provide actual examples of such, but that’s right in line with their “liberals hate America”, “Democrats want the terrorists to win” schtick that nobody listens to anymore anyway.

The local paper today said that Saddam is believed to have killed over 290,000 people in 25 years of rule, which puts him pretty far up there on the list of evil dictators, but he looks like a rank amateur compared to the Hitlers, Stalins, and Maos of the world. Still, maybe the US shouldn’t have worked so hard to put a guy like this in power back in the Reagan days. I mean, since we propped him up, provided money, weapons, and the ingredients to make the infamous VX nerve gas he used on the Kurds, doesn’t that make this nation’s past leaders accomplices to these crimes?

What about the current Iraq war? We’re not beheading people in the street, but torture and death are still daily events in much of the country – not to mention the lack of electricity and running water and the return of Islamic extremism that was largely quashed under Saddam’s rule. The estimated civilian casualty count in “liberated” Iraq ranges from “Who cares? They’re brown-skinned heathens anyway” to 600,000+, depending on who you listen to, so clearly Iraq in the throes of Freedom(tm) is a much more dangerous place than it was under its brutal dictator. It took Saddam a quarter century to ruin as many lives as he did; we’ve obviously brought American-style efficiency to the job, because under our benevolent guidance they’re dying at a much faster rate.

When do the war crimes trials for the Neandro-cons begin?

Of all the comments I’ve seen coming from the pundits on this one, my favorite quote was from Jesse Jackson – an unusual occurrence, because for the most part I have a low JJ tolerance.

“”It will not increase our moral authority in the world. … Saddam’s heinous crimes against humanity can never be diminished, but he was our ally while he was doing it. ….. Saddam as a war trophy only deepens the catastrophe to which we are indelibly linked.”

(I started writing this several days ago but didn’t have time to struggle with table formatting inside the blog software until now – so it’s a bit dated, but still relevant).

As Bill Maher pointed out not long ago. in a number of important ways the US has fallen behind any other nations in recent years. In best-to-worst rankings we’re well into the double digits on many health and education issues, freedom of the press, etc.

Well, this week there’s good news and bad news for those who would see our rankings improved. In a poll among British citizens, we came in at a solid number 2 in one category! The bad news is that Al Qaeda was the overall winner.

The category? Nations or organizations posing the greatest threat to world peace.

The results of this poll are clearly ludicrous. I mean, really, for all his faults – George Bush ranked between Osama bin Laden and Kim Jong Il as a threat to world peace? Preposterous. Let’s debunk this clearly biased paper’s flawed results.

Dictatorial Powers:

Osama Bin Laden	Kim Jong Il	George Dub Ya
Can have people yanked off the street, held indefinitely without charges or trial, and tortured, with cheering support from fanatical followers in the streets of many third world nations. Has to get past law enforcement and military to get at potential victims.	Can have people yanked off the street, held indefinitely without charges or trial, and tortured, with cheering support from fanatical followers in Korea. Power limited outside his own country.	Can have people yanked off the street, held indefinitely without charges or trial, and tortured, with cheering support from fanatical followers, plus FOX news, countless neo-con think-tanks, Limbaugh-Hannity-Coulter types, etc., and a legal mandate granted by over half the members of the sitting legislative bodies. Worldwide reach.

Winner: USA

Conventional Military

Osama Bin Laden	Kim Jong Il	George Dub Ya
Bunch of guys with AK-47s, old US-issue stinger missiles given to them by some of the folks in the Bush administration, pipe bombs, box cutters, and molotov cocktails. Not capable of invading or holding foreign territory.	Moderate-sized, moderately-equipped army. For all the strutting and posturing, hasn’t attacked anyone recently.	Big, well-equipped, modern military and a demonstrated willingness to use it to further his own political goals. Launched poorly justified invasion and occupation of Iraq, now saber-rattling toward Iran.

Winner: USA

Category: Nukes

Osama Bin Laden	Kim Jong Il	George Dub Ya
Would be perfectly willing to use them if he had any. Fortunately doesn’t, but is still at large to be able to try to get one.	Can build bombs in small numbers. No long-range deployment capability.	ICBMs, missile subs, and nuclear-capable cruise missiles out the wazoo, with many of them approaching the “Best if used by” date stamped on the casing.

Winner: USA

Category: Death Toll

Osama Bin Laden	Kim Jong Il	George Dub Ya
Maybe 10,000 at worst, including all 9/11 victims, and making the sweeping generalization that all our troops killed in the middle-east were killed by Al Qaeda.	No idea. Lots, probably.	Esitmates range from “why should I trouble my beautiful mind with that” to 600,000+, and that’s just in Iraq in the last 4 years.

CLEAR WINNER: USA! USA! USA! WE”RE NUMBER 1!

(Do I really think the US is as dangerous to the world as Kimsama bil Jongen? Of course not – not so long as our system of government still allows us to vote out the guys who are doing this damage to our nation.)